No Sleep till Wonderland Read online

  I look at my crossed-out note and think about Ellen and the current state of our nonrelationship. Never been good at playing along, but I try again.

  Not exactly a breakthrough, and too ham-fisted and teen angsty.

  Dr. Who gives follow-up instructions. We can leave what we wrote hidden in our notebooks, or we can tear the page out, pass it up, and he’ll read the sentences aloud for discussion, without necessarily identifying the author.

  My circle mates rip and tear their journals like they’re opening presents from Santa Claus, although nobody believes in him. I tear mine out, too, but just a rectangular ribbon of paper, enough to encompass what I wrote. Dr. Who walks around the circle, moving but not really going anywhere, and collects the sentences. When he gets to me, I put the piece of paper in my mouth, chew it up, and swallow. It tastes stale, but it’s mine.

  Dr. Who tilts his head because I’m tilted. He says, “I don’t know if that was necessary, Mark.”

  I say, “Sorry, I slept through lunch.”

  Dr. Who reads what everyone else wrote, and I can’t pay attention. The anonymous secrets aren’t exactly helping my focus. I nod in and out of sleep, my head bobbing up and down in rhythm with my consciousness. I don’t participate in any discussion, and for once Dr. Who doesn’t prod me. Today I’m the kid in the back everyone ignores, and that’s fine.

  After the session ends, Dr. Who shepherds me aside. He has the journals stacked in his left arm, and his right hand rests on my elbow, gently holding on like it’s a rare musical instrument. He says, “Mark, you can of course say no, but I’m wondering if you’d consider sharing with me, just me, what you wrote today.”

  “Regurgitation isn’t a part of my skill set, doc. I bet the cat guy could cough you up a nice hair ball to interpret, though.”

  “Not quite what I had in mind, Mark. I was hoping you might just tell me what you wrote.”

  I can’t believe I’m the one he’s holding after class. And Christ, he’s leaning on me in his own wishy-washy way. I’m too aggravated to continue being a smart-ass or resist. I say, “How about I write it down again, doc? Don’t worry, I’m not hungry anymore.” I pull my journal out of the stack and rewrite the screed that sits in the bottom of my stomach. I close the book, put it back in the middle of his stack, and say, “Have at it,” then head out the door.

  I take the long cut home and walk by Gus’s East Second Street apartment. He lives in a run-down three-family. Its forest green paint sheds in giant flakes, falling green leaves from a sick tree. The other houses around him aren’t faring much better. I ring the bell and then press my face against his first-floor front window. The curtains are open, but it’s too dark inside and I can’t see anything. I knock on the glass, and it’s thin, brittle.

  I want to believe Gus came by my apartment this morning while I was indisposed, and don’t know what to believe if he didn’t. I sit on the warped and slanted porch stairs, cheek resting on fist, pouting. I think about leaving a where-are-you-where-have-you-been? note under his door but, feeling more angry than pathetic, I call the Abbey instead and ask if Gus is bartending tonight.

  “No.” The answer is a quick jab or a rabbit punch.

  “Can you check the schedule, tell me what night Gus will be there?”

  Mr. Happy says, “We’re too busy, call back later,” then hangs up.

  I light a cigarette and attack my lungs. The sun is setting, hiding behind the city somewhere. A cool breeze kicks up, but it’s a lie. It’ll be world-melting hot again tomorrow. I finish my smoke quick, the only thing I can do quick, and leave the stub on the porch. As my calling card, it’s perfect: bent, broken, and all used up.

  On the walk up Dorchester, I sneak a peak at the Abbey as I pass East Third. There’s a cop car parked out front, real cozy with the sidewalk. No bouncer at the door. Everyone’s playing Go Fish inside. I wonder where Eddie is right now. I wonder where everyone is.

  A few more tortured steps and I’m through the nexus of Dorchester and Broadway and to my building. As I unlock my door, a guy who isn’t Gus appears to my left and leans on the building like he won’t tip it over. A practiced posture, and he’s good at it. He might be too relaxed, though. It could get him into trouble.

  I say, “Hey.”

  He says, “Hello, Mr. Genevich.”

  We’re communicating. He presses a button on his key ring, and the blue Crown Vic parked right in front of my place chirps and blinks. Nice spot. If I had a car, I’d be jealous.

  My key and lock cooperate finally, and I say, “The door is opened, but I’m closed. Come back tomorrow morning, and bring donuts, preferably honey-dipped.”

  The guy who isn’t Gus laughs loudly; it’s high-pitched and sounds like a call from one of those almost-extinct New England birds that spends too much time alone on a frigid lake. I guess I’m a funny guy.

  He asks, “Given any thought to our conversation this morning?”

  That, however, is decidedly not funny.

  Thirteen

  A narcoleptic is the ultimate cynic, left with nothing to believe in, least of all himself, because everything could simply be a dream, and a lousy, meaningless one at that. Have at it, Freud.

  The alien dream from this morning has retreated to the shadows, a vampire hiding from the daylight, but I still remember its fangs. The man who isn’t Gus doesn’t look like either of the FBI agents who burst through my dream door. He’s African American, a few inches shorter than I am, and likely a few years younger too. Thick through the shoulders and chest. He wears a Red Sox hat, jeans, a white dress shirt, untucked, and a blue sports jacket, the color a little faded, a badge hanging out of the side pocket.

  I don’t recognize this man at all. I recognize the badge, though. He’s a Boston Police detective.

  I say, “No, I haven’t thought about our conversation.” He probably doesn’t want to hear that, even if it’s the truth. I don’t remember any of our conversation, assuming one did take place. I doubt it was about aliens.

  “I thought our chat was riveting, and I’ve been thinking about it all day. Mind if I come in?”

  I don’t think that’s a question upon which I can drop a no, like an anvil on a coyote. “My office is your office, Detective…sorry, I forgot your name already. I’ve never been good with details.” If I play nice, maybe he’ll give me the highlights.

  I fiddle with the office door. The detective moves in, stands behind me. I hear his pause but don’t see his is-he-serious? facial contortions. “Bayo Owolewa. You spent the morning calling me the Big O.” Sounds like something the asleep me would do. He’s a rascal, that one.

  I finally get the door open, and we enter the magic chamber. After last year’s ransacking, fire, and rebuild of my office, I haven’t added any personal touches. Don’t see that much sense in adorning what has been made painfully clear to be nonpermanent. The walls are split, the lower half is wood paneling that matches the hardwood floor, and the upper half is wallpapered, some shade of light maroon Ellen picked out. Apparently it’s soft and nonthreatening, just like me. Nothing else on the walls other than some brass light fixtures. I turn them on. It’s show time.

  We sit, take our positions. “Apologies, Detective Owolewa. I wasn’t exactly myself this morning. Never am before my first vat of coffee.”

  “Is that so? Who was it that I talked to this morning, then?” He smiles. I’m treating his question as rhetorical, even if it isn’t.

  I take a shot in my proverbial dark and say, “Going solo tonight, Detective? Where’s your partner from this morning? He didn’t want a return engagement? Was it something I said?” I keep talking because I already know the shot missed and missed bad, and the only way to prevent the uncomfortable conversation that is sure to follow is to go defensive and box it out with my misguided words.

  Detective Owolewa takes off his Sox hat and rubs his shaved bald head. “I don’t have a partner, Mr. Genevich.” He doesn’t raise his voice, and I appreciate his patience with m
e, but his calm is probably much more dangerous.

  Maybe I should take off my hat too, but I’m afraid he’d somehow see how much I’m panicking inside my head. I scratch the side of my face, and like the majority of lottery scratch tickets it’s a loser. I say, “I don’t remember meeting you or talking to you this morning, Detective.” I’m not quite sure how to continue, how to explain, so I blurt out, “I have narcolepsy,” as if narcolepsy was a thing, something I could cup in my hand, show it off, and then coo, Look, isn’t the narcolepsy adorable?

  “I know that, Mr. Genevich, and I know who you are.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  “I spent part of my afternoon reading up on you, familiarizing myself with narcolepsy.”

  Yeah, because all it takes to know narcolepsy is an hour or two in the afternoon, or, more likely, a coffee break spent on a cursory Web search. I say, “Great, then, and since you’re a self-appointed narcolepsy expert, you won’t have any trouble believing that I was asleep for the duration of your a.m. personal appearance. Or asleep enough that I don’t remember you.”

  There are shades and hues of my sleeps that I discover every day. A panoply of consciousness levels that are complex and fickle, and they can’t be codified by the WebMD, and they can’t be learned by someone who isn’t me, because I’m alone being me, and I always sleep alone.

  Dammit. I’m getting too worked up over a throwaway comment by a detective simply doing his job.

  He says, “I never claimed to be an expert, Mr. Genevich. I won’t pretend to know what you’re going through.”

  I take out a cigarette and offer him one by pointing it at him. He declines. I say, “You’re too calm and reasonable to be a police detective. I’m guessing no one likes you at the station because you’re overly productive and efficient.”

  There’s that bird-call laugh of his he gave me out front. Can’t describe it as infectious, but it tugs a half smile out of me. He says, “Just to be clear, you’re claiming that your end of our previous conversation was performed while in the throws of automatic behavior.”

  I guess he did some familiarizing. I’m impressed but won’t admit it. “Yeah, sometimes I carry on conversations and other simple tasks while asleep. I’m fun at parties.”

  He says, “Are you awake now, Mr. Genevich?”

  A fair question, but nobody gets to ask it. My tugged-out smile retreats into the forest of my facial hair. “I think so. Unless you’re another unpleasant dream. I could be Jacob Marley, and you could be the undigested bit of beef, the crumb of cheese.”

  “I’m not into role playing.”

  “Your loss.” I pause and give some brief attention to my cigarette. “Let’s get to it, Detective. Never keep a narcoleptic waiting, or is it don’t feed him after midnight? I get the rules mixed up.”

  “I hope you’re aware that the amphetamines I found in your possession this morning are enough to warrant an arrest.”

  I almost swallow my cigarette. I’m sure he notices. I would’ve preferred the missing bag of greenies stayed missing. Everyone would’ve been happier. I talk slowly, wanting to believe my own lie, “They’re not mine.”

  “That’s what you said this morning when you were asleep. At least you and yourself have that part of the story straight.”

  “We make a good team.”

  Detective Owolewa pulls a gray piece of paper from his sports coat. “I suppose this handwritten list of side effects wasn’t yours either, Mr. Genevich.”

  I should just give in to despair now and get it over with. I completely forgot about the list, didn’t realize it was missing. I take it out on my cigarette and mash it into an ashtray.

  “That’s my list. But it’s research. Information. Data points. Just, you know, familiarizing myself with the side effects of the drug like a good detective would.” My traitorous hands hold themselves out palms up, a supplicating pose that says, Might as well put the cuffs on me now.

  “Multiple witnesses placed you at the Abbey four nights ago, Mr. Genevich. Were you at the bar?”

  Why are we going to the Abbey? This is going south too fast; we’ll be in Patagonia soon. It’s clear Gus did not visit me this morning, and now I’m wondering if he’s being lumped into the witness pile.

  “I was, and had a few drinks too many. My apologies if you find the evils of drink offensive.”

  “Temperance isn’t my concern, Mr. Genevich.” Detective Owolewa is so relaxed he should be asleep. It’d only be fair. “How well do you know the bouncer, Eddie Ryan?” He takes out a little black notebook. He’s not going to ask for my phone number.

  Whoa. Don’t like where he’s making connections. If I was nervous before, I’m facing a China Syndrome scenario now. “I know of him. I know he’s a scumbag. That night at the bar we exchanged unpleasantries. He called me a pretend cop, I told him to kiss my hairy foot, and we went about our merry ways.”

  “Did you refer to Eddie as a scumbag because he’s a small time drug dealer, dealing almost exclusively in speed and meth, or because he simply called you names?”

  Well played by Detective Owolewa, and there’s no winning answer to that question. I say, “I was working on a case involving Eddie.” Here comes a whopper. I pause to yawn and barely cover it up with my dead-weight hand. “I went to the Abbey to put a face to the name of Eddie Ryan. A friend of a friend was being stalked by him.”

  “Jody O’Malley?”

  “No, another woman. Eddie had seen this woman once at the Abbey, wouldn’t accept her ‘fuck off’ to his dating game invitation. He called her work and threatened he’d show up, pull a Here’s Johnny. The night of the fire, I was at the woman’s downtown bar, watching and waiting for Eddie, who never showed. Then I followed her home, to her apartment on I Street. I was walking home and ran into the fire. Literally.”

  Detective Owolewa sighs. I share the sentiment. He asks for Ekat’s name and her home and work addresses. I give him the information and tell him that a concerned friend hired me, not Ekat, a detail that I’m sure Ekat will provide the detective. My story sounds good, and it’s almost true, but the timeline of the Abbey visit and Eddie’s harassing call to Ekat doesn’t fit together. Details schmetails.

  He says, “How about the name of the friend who hired you?”

  “I’m keeping that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t give out info on who hired me.”

  “You do realize I’ll be able to get that name from”—he pauses and looks at his notebook—“Ekat, right?”

  “As long as it doesn’t come from me.”

  “Why would this friend hire you, and not Ekat?”

  The case was a favor, right? Gus’s words. We’d both be helping each other. It isn’t exactly working out that way. I’m not getting by with a little help from my friend. I say, “Ekat didn’t know of me and my services. The friend did.”

  “Sounds like the friend might know Eddie, too, Mr. Genevich. Are you sure you don’t want to give me a name?”

  I’m not sure. Withholding Gus’s name could be putting him in more trouble than he already is, assuming there is trouble. Then again my performance here isn’t helping Gus out either. Or helping me.

  “I’m sure.”

  Detective Owolewa writes something lengthy into his notebook. I won’t ask him if it’s a self-portrait. He looks up, passes his pen between his fingers, which still want something to do, and says, “Did you purchase the amphetamines from Eddie Ryan?”

  “No. I didn’t buy the drugs from anyone. They were given to me by a client. The client was misguided but was trying to help me and my narcolepsy.”

  “A client or a friend, Mr. Genevich?”

  Good question. “Does it matter?”

  “I’m getting the feeling it might.”

  “You can’t rely on feelings, Detective. Trust me, they’re as unreliable as I am.”

  “Thanks for the tip. I could insist that you tell me who gave you the amphetamines, Mr. Genevich.”r />
  My cell phone rings. I shrug and say, “Sorry. So very popular these days,” and pull it out of my pocket to shut the ringer off. The call is from Ellen, not Gus, as I’d hoped. I let it go to voice mail. She has impeccable timing, at least.

  “Is the person who hired you to watch Ekat the same person who gave you the amphetamines?”

  “No.” The word comes out structurally intact with the n before the o. It’s an easy word, the one we all learn when we’re cute and everyone loves us. But I say it wrong. There’s no power of authority behind it, no conviction, no strength. It’s a request or a plea, and one that won’t be granted.

  Detective Owolewa closes his notebook and leans in, hovering his head over the table. “Between you and me, Mr. Genevich, did the amphetamines work? Did they help you with your condition?”

  I don’t think I can tell him that I didn’t take the amphetamines. I’ve lost control of a conversation that I never had in control. I say, “No,” again, but this one is real, and then I get stuck on the phrase your condition. It sounds like a rash that simply needs cream, a little dab will do ya. Or the opposite: your condition is expansive, like he’s asking about the state of the union of me, something I’m not prepared to address.

  My head snaps up from the pillow that is my chest. I was out, but not for long. Detective Owolewa is sitting in the same position, watching. Familiarizing.

  “Are you back, Mr. Genevich?”

  I nod. Too embarrassed to be pithy, I finish what I started and say, “I took two pills last night, and it made everything worse. Still is making everything worse, by the looks of it.”

  He says, “I’m going to be straight with you, Mr. Genevich. I don’t think you’ve done anything intentionally wrong, but I also don’t know exactly what to think here. It seems more than a little odd that you’d show up at the fire that wipes out Eddie’s girlfriend’s apartment building, odd that you told the on-scene officer that you saved the O’Malley kid when a crowd saw the neighbor taking him out of the building.”